Skulduggery Pleasant (Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 1)

Meet the great Skulduggery Pleasant: wise-cracking detective, powerful magician, master of dirty tricks and burglary (in the name of the greater good, of course).

Oh yeah. And dead.

Then there's his sidekick, Stephanie. She's… well, she's a twelve-year-old girl. With a pair like this on the case, evil had better watch out…

“So you won't keep anything from me again?"
He put his hand to his chest. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
"Okay then. Though you don't actually have a heart," she said.
"I know."
"And technically, you've already died."
"I know that too."
"Just so we're clear."

Stephanie's uncle Gordon is a writer of horror fiction. But when he dies and leaves her his estate, Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror, it certainly wasn't fiction.

Pursued by evil forces intent on recovering a mysterious key, Stephanie finds help from an unusual source – the wisecracking skeleton of a dead wizard.

When all hell breaks loose, it's lucky for Skulduggery that he's already dead. Though he's about to discover that being a skeleton doesn't stop you from being tortured, if the torturer is determined enough. And if there's anything Skulduggery hates, it's torture… Will evil win the day? Will Stephanie and Skulduggery stop bickering long enough to stop it? One thing's for sure: evil won't know what's hit it.

• Brand new and striking cover editions of this ground-breaking children’s series with continues to go from strength to strength

• Skulduggery Pleasant was named the Bord Gais Irish Book of the Decade in 2010 beating adult authors such as Cathy Kelly, Colm Tobin and Cecelia Ahern amongst others

• Dedicated global website www.skulduggerypleasant.com continues to get bigger and better with new downloads, widgets, wallpapers and web chats with author Derek Landy, and 45k Skulduggery fans signed up to hear the latest news

• Unofficial forum and Facebook group run for fans by fans continues to grow and drive the online Skulduggery buzz

• Catch up with Derek regularly on his active new blog http://dereklandy.blogspot.com

• Publishing along with the full rejacketed backlist: PLAYING WITH FIRE, THE FACELESS ONES, DARK DAYS and new into paperback MORTAL COIL

Competition: Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy; Darren Shan; Anthony Horowitz